Price of Loyalty
by StarGzer
Summary: A mission goes horribly wrong. One-shot with Chief and Garrison.


A first try at Garrison's Gorillas. For better or worse, Kittystitch turned me on to GG and I've managed to catch all the YouTube episodes (thank-you whoever posted them). This very short story has been percolating for a while and I hope I captured the characterizations adequately.

 **Price of Loyalty**

When Chief woke again, he was surprisingly coherent.

"What's going on, Warden?"

"You've got a fever."

"All right." Chief said it matter-of-factly, like he was ticking off an instruction for the mission. He asked for some water and Garrison gave him as much as he could drink. Chief pushed the cup away and he set it on the floor beside the blankets.

"Have a rest, then we'll go again. You need to get more water down."

"Yeah? What if I'm not thirsty?"

"You have a fever. You're losing fluids."

Chief shifted and tensed, face creasing through a wave of pain.

Garrison palmed his shoulder. "Try and stay still. Actor and Casino can't be far behind." Except they could, because he and Chief had become separated from the rest of the men.

He wasn't falling for this small window of coherence. He'd seen and heard it before, Chief and his insolence—he'd throw a few minutes of it at you, then drop like a stone. A hint of an apology interlaced with the confession, when it came.

"Hey, Warden?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm not feelin' so great."

Cross-legged on the floor, Garrison propped his head up with one hand and waited. A handprint of blood, crusted and dark, smeared his front pocket. It all happened so fast—the blink of an eye. He'd spent the last hour second-guessing himself about moving away from the meeting point. He crammed two knuckles against his eyelids, and rubbed.

Chief lay with his face turned toward the window. Pale. Quiet. A few lines of pain etched across his mouth, but none of the anguish from before. A dark spot had already formed on the bandage around his belly.

It was all kinds of wrong—there was too much blood.

And it should have been his.

#-#-#-#-#

 _Before he could register the snick of metal against metal, a dull boom slammed into the tree trunk next to him, sending out showers of splintered wood._

 _Two more shots peeled off before Chief dove straight into him, sending them both cartwheeling. His head bounced off something hard and for a moment his vision whited out._

 _He wiped at his eyes and floundered in the snow, trying to get his legs underneath him. The rifle cracked again, this time further away._

 _Scrambling up, he ran past the fork in the trail to the woods. A clearing was ahead and he slid into it on snow-soaked ground. The meaty sound of fists hitting bodies was intermingled with curses._

 _He fired off two warning rounds, and the men turned in surprise. Then a sickening crunch of ice and underbrush echoed across the clearing. Both men gave startled cries…and disappeared._

 _Panic froze his legs for a moment. He jogged to the edge of the rise and peered over. Chief lay in a curled heap, the other man was a few yards away, his neck bent at an unnatural angle._

 _He slipped to the bottom of the ditch._

" _Are you hurt?" His hands fanned out on Chief's back. "Are you hurt?"_

 _Chief flinched when he pulled him over. A dark spot welled up through his coat, off to one side. Pushing a few fingers under the torn fabric, they came out wet and sticky. "Where else?"_

" _Just my side." Chief grabbed his sleeve. "It was the sentry from the depot."_

 _He nodded to the dead German. "I know."_

 _A furtive glance around revealed trees and brush and the shadows beyond. No one else was there. "We've got to go." He wrapped his hands around the lapels of Chief's jacket and hoisted him to his feet._

" _Warden, not back to the depot. That place'll be crawling with people soon enough."_

 _He frowned and looked in all directions. Urgency drove a decision. North, away from the depot, and the rendezvous point._

 _Destiny smiled for once because there was a cabin, tucked away in the middle of nowhere._

#-#-#-#-#

Garrison slapped the wooden strut of the porch. "Where are they? I need them. Now." A sudden blaze of pain in his head had him questioning going outside. He fumbled with the door, head pounding out a cadence worthy of any basic training platoon, and stumbled over the threshold.

When he slid inside, Chief brought his knife up in a wild, uncontrolled arc. The movement sent Garrison sprawling for the floor.

"Chief! It's me, Garrison!"

He crawled cautiously to the blankets, felt the bloom of hope at finding him conscious rapidly fading. Chief was still trying to raise his knife again, strength failing him. Garrison closed his hand around the hilt, and pulled it loose from his jumping fingers.

He gripped Chief's jaw, tilted his face to look at him, fingertips resting against the thready rush of blood beneath the stubble there.

Chief stared a thousand yards through him. "I didn't see this comin', Warden," he breathed out, voice hitching when his body trembled.

Garrison raked his fingers through his hair. "Why did you take the bullet? What would ever make you think that was a good idea?" He picked at Chief's shirt, trying to cover the gore.

But Chief was silent.

He twisted, found the wall with his back as he sat, and pulled him against his lap, closing his eyes against the twitching, shaking mess.

"They're on their way. Just, hold on."

He woke to someone gripping his upper arm.

"Hey. Warden, let him go. You gotta let him go."

 _Casino._

He felt the weight of Chief's body in his lap. Chief wasn't moving. He snapped his eyes open and met the concerned faces of Casino and Actor a half a foot above his own.

"Let me take' im," Casino was saying, and Garrison looked down at Chief's slack-jawed, chalk-white face. He couldn't tell if he was…

"I wasn't asleep."

"Okay, Warden. Okay. Except that Goniff is waitin' with the car, not close but close enough." He saw Casino and Actor exchange wary glances above him.

"He's not dead." Garrison wasn't quite sure why his stomach flipped the way it did, when Actor shook his head in agreement.

"No, he's not. But he's not doing so well, either. Help us get him out to the car." He leaned in, put a hand on Garrison's shoulder.

Garrison let go.

Chief was suddenly gone from his lap, leaving a weightlessness against his chest. Actor pointed a light in his eyes and he held up his palm, squinted.

"Lieutenant, did you hit your head?"

He lifted his fingers to an open flap of skin above his left ear, felt the dried rivulet of blood down the side of his face in wonderment.

#-#-#-#-#

Two surgeries were required in the end. Each doctor that spoke with Garrison used the word 'lucky' and sometimes 'goddamn lucky'. Chief was a lot of things, but lucky wasn't one of them.

Garrison watched as he mustered the energy to open his eyes.

He blinked blearily. "They fix you up, Warden?"

Garrison rubbed the linen bandage encircling his head. "Better than you. I have to start the debriefing soon, I'll stop by after, see how you're doing. You need anything before I go?"

Chief shook his head. "No, I'm good." He waited until Garrison was almost to the door before he called him back. "Hey, Warden?"

Garrison turned, hand on the doorframe. "What?"

"Just…it doesn't mean anything, you know? It needed to be done, so I did it. You shouldn't question it. End of story."

Garrison wished he could do that.

The End

12~10~15


End file.
